We continue our monthly series of blogs on intriguing people connected with our churches with a curious tale from Llanfrothen – involving a future Prime Minister allegedly breaking into the churchyard in the dead of night to make an illicit burial. Robert Roberts was a north-Walian quarryman who had a simple wish on his death in 1888 – to be buried next to his daughter in his local churchyard, at Llanfrothen in Merionethshire. All very well, but Robert Roberts wasn’t a member of the Established Church of England – he was a nonconformist – and the Rector unlawfully refused him. Cue young solicitor, David Lloyd George, who took up the case and saw it to the High Court. The hostility aroused by the actions of the rector of Llanfrothen and his supporters also increased the momentum of the calls for the Disestablishment of the church in Wales, finally achieved in 1920.
Read more of the intriguing case of Robert Roberts of Llanfrothen.